All You Need is Love.

Lennon coined the phrase and he was spot on. The reality is, all we really do need is love. I believe that with my WHOLE heart. I believe that humans are created to love and be loved. I believe that God designed us to love, to long for love. I believe love can fill us up and bring us joy. It’s a super emotion, a reality, a gift, and when you have it, you know it. It starts with our parents. And then with friends. Perhaps a pet. A hobby. A boyfriend. Grandparents. Siblings. A spouse. Food. Art. Travel. When we experience love, whether it be human love or the love of something, I believe we are at our best. The way we were designed to be.

And today, albeit a Hallmark holiday, I wish nothing more than each of you to experience love. Whether it’s savoring your favorite food. Sharing an evening in with your closest girlfriends, champagne and strawberries (and perhaps a chick flick). Going on a first date. Or a tenth one. Giving love to someone else by means of your words or actions or a traditional love letter (come on, you know you would love to get one of these). Surprising your kids with a Valentine’s Day game night at home where you get to eat cupcakes for dinner. Calling someone you haven’t spoken to lately just to say “I Love You.” Stopping, even just for a moment, to remind yourself of all the love you are surrounded with each and every day.

However you spend today and tonight, I encourage you to love and be loved! And in the meantime, here are some beautiful quotes I curated to get you in the mood. Oh come on, not that kind of mood! Gross.

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4 responses

Happy Valentine’s Day Ann!! I love how you use big words. My favorite one is probably “albeit”. I don’t really know what it means, but it sounds nice and flows with the text :-). How are you celebrating this day? I sent 6 Valentine cards to my girlfriends 🙂

Love this! But St. Valentine’s Day is no hallmark holiday! (unlike the “Sweetest Day” that as a child I thought was “Sweedish Day” and because I wasn’t Sweedish, that was why my Mom didn’t buy me any heart candy that day….)

Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II. He was apprehended, and sent by the emperor to the prefect of Rome, who, on finding all his promises to make him renounce his faith ineffectual, commanded him to be beaten with clubs, and afterwards, to be beheaded, which was executed on February 14, about the year 270. Pope Julius I is said to have built a church near Ponte Mole to his memory, which for a long time gave name to the gate now called Porta del Popolo, formerly, Porta Valetini. The greatest part of his relics are now in the church of St. Praxedes. His name is celebrated as that of an illustrious martyr in the sacramentary of St. Gregory, the Roman Missal of Thomasius, in the calendar of F. Fronto and that of Allatius, in Bede, Usuard, Ado, Notker and all other martyrologies on this day. To abolish the heathens lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls, in honor of their goddess Februata Juno, on the fifteenth of this month, several zealous pastors substituted the names of saints in billets given on this day.

The origin of St. Valentine, and how many St. Valentines there were, remains a mystery. One opinion is that he was a Roman martyred for refusing to give up his Christian faith. Other historians hold that St. Valentine was a temple priest jailed for defiance during the reign of Claudius. Whoever he was, Valentine really existed because archaeologists have unearthed a Roman catacomb and an ancient church dedicated to Saint Valentine. In 496 AD Pope Gelasius marked February 14th as a celebration in honor of his martyrdom.